Press CensorshipTop Censored Press Stories of 2011

Note: To find the top press censorship stories of any year from 2003 to present, click here.

Project Censored specializes in covering the top stories which were subjected to press censorship either by being ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year.Project Censored is a research team composed of more than 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who annually review between 700 and 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance.

The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a distinguished panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.

A summary of the top 25 press censorship stories of 2011 provided below proves quite revealing and most informative. Each summary has a link for those who want to read the entire article. For whatever reason the mainstream media won't report these stories. Yet thanks to the Internet and wonderful, committed groups like Project Censored, the news is getting out. By revealing these examples of press censorship, we can stop the excessive secrecy and work together for a brighter future. And don't miss the sections on "News Stories of Hope and Creative Change" and "What you can do." Please help to spread the word, and take care.

Top 25 Stories of 2011 Subjected to Press Censorship

1. More US Soldiers Committed Suicide Than Died in Combat
(For full story, click here)

For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462). In 2009, the 381 suicides of active-duty soldiers recorded by the military also exceeded the number of deaths in battle. The Good report, which references the Congressional Quarterly as a source, was published in January 2011, just weeks after military authorities announced that a psychological screening program seemed to be stemming the suicide rate among active-duty soldiers. "This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are 'working,'" Good Senior Editor Cord Jefferson wrote.

2. US Military Manipulates the Social Media (For full story, click here)

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. Anyone suspicious of "sock puppets" ... would be unnerved by the US military's "online persona management service," a little-known program described in The Guardian UK, Raw Story, and Computerworld stories. The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) is developing the program. Using up to 10 false identities, they can counter charged political dialogue with pro-military propaganda. These "personas" can be given detailed, fictionalized backgrounds to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account.

The Obama administration has quietly put into practice an 'incomplete idea' left over from the G.W. Bush presidency: creating a de facto 'presidential international assassination program.' U.S. citizens suspected of encouraging "terror" are being put on "death lists" without any due process of law. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military have the authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad without a trial and outside war zones if strong evidence exists that they're involved in terrorist activity, the Washington Post reported in a front page story. A moral, ethical, and legal analysis of the assassinations seems to be significantly lacking inside the corporate media. In December of 2010, Human Rights Watch asked for clarification of the legal rationale behind this practice after a judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the notion.

A new worldwide spike in agricultural commodity and food prices is generating both predictable and extraordinary fallouts. The search for causes once again leads to a conjuncture of flawed policies in trade, environment, finance and agriculture that is likely to produce more dangerous volatility in years to come. David Moberg, offering an in-depth breakdown of the global food crisis in In These Times, places the blame for rising food prices and increasing malnutrition on flawed economic policies. "Hunger is currently a result of poverty and inequality, not lack of food," he concludes. "Since 2010 began, roughly another 44 million people have quietly crossed the threshold into malnutrition, joining 925 million already suffering from lack of food," Moberg writes. "If prices continue to rise, this food crisis will push the ranks of the hungry toward a billion people."

Over the past four years roughly a million immigrants have been incarcerated in dangerous detention facilities in our taxpayer-financed private prison system. Children were abused, women were raped, and men died from lack of basic medical attention. When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ran for reelection in 2010, her greatest out-of-state campaign contributions came from high-ranking executives of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the nation's largest prison companies. CCA profits directly from building and operating prisons and detention centers. CCA previously employed two of Brewer's legislative aides as lobbyists. Peter Cervantes-Gautschi spotlights Brewer's links to CCA and goes deeper still, offering an historic account of how investors in CCA and prison giant Geo Group have for years actively pushed for legislation that would result in the widespread incarceration of undocumented immigrants.

Earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated Internet search engine giant Google for illegally collecting personal data such as passwords, emails, and other online activities from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in homes and businesses across the US and around the world. A flurry of stories aired in the spring of 2010 when it became apparent that Google Street View vehicles, in the process of collecting data for its mapping service, also picked up consumer "payload" data on Wi-Fi networks, including e-mail messages, website data, user names, and passwords. The tech giant publicly apologized for what it characterized as a mistake, saying it had "failed badly." The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) admonished Google in a letter, but declined to pursue it further. Project Censored authors claim that the FTC abandoned its inquiry because a week earlier, Obama attended a Democratic Party fundraiser at the Palo Alto home of Google executive Marissa Mayer, citing a San Francisco Chronicle article about the $30,000-per person affair.

7. U.S. Army and Psychology's Largest Experiment–Ever (For full story, click here)

In the January 2011 issue of American Psychologist, the American Psychology Association (APA) dedicated 13 articles to detailing and celebrating a 117 million dollar collaboration with the US Army, called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF). It's being marketed as a resilience training to reduce adverse psychological consequences to soldiers who endure combat. Comprehensive Solider Fitness (CSF) is described as a "holistic approach to warrior training," emphasizing positive psychology as a means to counter mental health problems arising from horrific combat situations. Yet there are many questions about the wisdom of launching a required, untested psychology program for more than a million soldiers, one that encourages soldiers to think positive even in the face of traumatizing events. This "training" program might better be described as a research project. The core hypothesis of this massive program's success has yet to be confirmed through further research.

8. The Myth of Clean and Safe Nuclear Power (For full story, click here)

The terrifying meltdowns of Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors reignited worldwide debate about the wisdom of relying on nuclear energy as an electricity source. While Germany opted to phase out its nuclear facilities by 2022 in the wake of the tragedy, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) came under scrutiny after a Union of Concerned Scientists report analyzed 14 "near misses" at nuclear power plants in 2010, revealing the shortcomings in NRC inspections. Yet mainstream media's treatment of nuclear power is all too willing to endorse the idea that nuclear power is safe. Major news publications readily go along with the nuclear industry's branding of the power source as "clean" and "carbon free" when it's really not. Nuclear power presents a security threat of unprecedented proportions: It's capable of a catastrophic accident that can kill hundreds of thousands of people, with a byproduct that is toxic for millennia. To call nuclear power "clean" is an affront to science, common sense, and the English language itself.

9. The Government is Manipulating the Weather (For full story, click here)

Rising global temperatures, increasing population, and degradation of water supplies, have created broad support for the growing field of weather modification. The U.S. government has conducted weather modification experiments for over half a century, and the military-industrial complex stands poised to capitalize on these discoveries. One of the latest programs is HAARP, the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program. This technology can potentially trigger floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. The scientific idea behind HAARP is to "excite" a specific area of the ionosphere and observe the physical processes in that excited area with intention of modifying ecological conditions. HAARP can also be used as a weapon system, capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions. At a recent international symposium, scientists asserted that manipulation of climate through modification of cirrus clouds is neither a hoax nor a conspiracy theory and is fully operational.

10. Real Unemployment: One Out of Five in US (For full story, click here)

The corporate media wants America to feel secure during a time of unemployment crisis, but people deserve to know what is really happening rather than a statistical lie. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the "official unemployment rate" by counting everyone who had no job, was available for work, and had actively sought work in the last four weeks, according to the BLS website. But alternative BLS statistics incorporate so-called "discouraged workers," unemployed individuals who've given up on the job hunt. In the first four months of 2011, the national unemployment rate officially stood at around 9 percent, while a BLS statistic incorporating discouraged workers and the marginally employed bumped that figure up to 15.9 percent. Yet according to San Francisco-based economist John Williams, who maintains a website called Shadow Government Statistics, the "real" unemployment rate is actually 22.1 percent, or more than one out of five US residents.

Human trafficking occurs throughout the world, yet has become increasingly more prevalent in Iraq due to the instability produced by the war. Many Iraqi women and girls are widowed or orphaned by wartime casualties. Currently, more than 50,000 Iraqi women have fled to Jordan and Syria and are trapped in sexual servitude with no possibility of escape.

Many people do not realize that there is a swirling mass of plastic in the middle of the Pacific ocean that qualifies as the planet's largest garbage dump. Recent research sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests the affected area may be twice the size of Hawaii. The 5 Gyres Project estimates that there are 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean right now.

13. Will a State of Emergency Be Used to Supersede Our Constitution? (Story here)

A program dating back to the Eisenhower era is now converted to bestow secret powers on the president for anything he considers an emergency. Recent "Continuity of Government" planning has quietly removed time-honored constitutional protections and increased the militarization of civilian law enforcement. For the first time in US history, military troops are allowed to do police actions in US cities. Recently the US Army established an active-duty brigade trained to manage civil unrest and crowd control. Historically this has been illegal. There has been a loss of local authority and sustained preparations for the possibility of martial law.

14. Family Pressure on Young Girls for Genitalia Mutilation in Kenya (For full story, click here)

Girls as young as nine years old were threatened with death if they tried to escape the Kamunera location, where they awaited female genitalia mutilation in Kenya. Some are still in hiding, fearing that their parents will disown them for running away to avoid circumcision. Many girls have been forced to cut short their studies and married off at a young age because of parental fear the daughters will be ostracized if too educated.

The Obama administration has distributed billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation's biggest polluters and granted exemptions from basic environmental errors. The administration's main goal in Energy Secretary Steven Chu words was to "get the money out and spent as quickly as possible".

16. Sweatshops in China Are Making Your iPods While Workers Suffer (Story here)

Apple's suppliers routinely violate China's "Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases." Several manufacturers replaced alcohol with n-hexane, which is used to clean parts. It is a chemical that works better than alcohol, but poisons workers. In these factories the workers, often women in their teens or 20s, were forced to work with the poison in unventilated rooms.

Lethal superbugs are emerging that do not respond to any known drugs. The World Health Organization states that the New Delhi or NDM-1 superbug was recently found in UK patients and has reached a critical point. These super bugs are resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, which is a major concern to experts because they are used for hard to treat infections that evade other drugs. Already 25,000 people die each year from superbugs in Europe.

In May 2010, five months after an earthquake destroyed Haiti, the American multinational Monsanto donated the country 60 tons of corn and vegetable hybrid seed. USAID took charge of the seed distribution. A month later, on June 4, 2010, around 10,000 Haitian farmers demonstrated against Monsanto's donation. Haitian farmers denounced Monsanto's seeds as they can't be reused each year, which leads to the necessity of buying new seed from the multinational every new sowing season. This dependence could also extend to the fertilizers and herbicides required by the american multinational who also produces them.

19. Oxfam Exposes How Aid Is Used for Political Purposes (For full story, click here)

In a new report, Oxfam has found that billions of dollars in international aid which could have transformed the lives of many people in some of the poorest countries in the world, was spent on unsustainable, expensive and dangerous aid projects which international donor governments used to support their own short-term foreign policy and security objectives. This type of aid often bypasses the poorest people and dangerously distorts the line between civilian and military activity. The politicization and militarization of aid has in some places made it much harder for aid agencies to provide help to those in need.

There is increasing concern over the health impact of growing and eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The World Health Organization has identified allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, gene transfer, outcrossing, escape of GM genes into the wild population, gene stability, susceptibility of non-target organisms (insects), and loss of biodiversity as potential issues of using GM seeds. Multiple, reliable sources show that you may be eating genetically modified food daily which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death in lab animals. (More here)

Lyme disease is one of the most political and controversial epidemics of our time. Lyme originates from a bacteria transmitted through the bite of a tick which can remain hidden for years, with symptoms mimicking other diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, and ADHD. And it is growing – new cases of Lyme occur each year at a rate ten times higher then that of AIDS and the West Nile Virus combined. Yet doctors risk losing their license if they treat Lyme as the chronic disease it is known to be. (Powerful documentary here)

"Participatory Budgeting" (PB) is a process that allows citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a public budget. The process typically involves a series of meetings, work by community "delegates" or representatives, and ultimately a final vote. It was first implemented in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990, and has since spread.

Shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to one trillion single-use plastic bags per year. These bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. As larger animals eat smaller plastic-laden creatures, this also affects our health as we end up eating some form of plastic in our sea food. Now 35 countries have already banned the use of plastic bags, nine countries have passed levies and fees on use, and 12 countries are considering bans or fees.

24. South Dakota Takes Extreme Measures to Be the Top Anti-Abortion State (Story here)

South Dakota is taking extreme action against any person who performs an abortion within the states borders. The South Dakota House is taking up a bill to redefine "justifiable homicide" that may "make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions," Mother Jones reports.

President Obama's undeclared and Congressionally unauthorized war against Libya may have been compounded by the crime of spreading toxic uranium oxide in populated areas of that country. Concern has been voiced by groups such as the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, which monitor the military use of so-called depleted-uranium (DU) anti-tank and bunker-penetrating shells.

News Stories of Hope and Creative Change

For more than 30 years, Project Censored has searched out the most important undercovered stories of the year showing what's wrong with our world. But in 2008, Project Censored began offering a new feature: a list of the top underreported stories of hope and creative change. These stories suggest that a better world is both possible and practical, and that every day, all over the world, people are solving problems. The message is simple: Stop fighting or lamenting existing reality – be an innovator and help create something better. Below are 12 key examples from the year 2011. To download the full list of inspiring news,
click here.

Arab Spring Topples Dictators: In Dec. 2010, following a vegetable seller named Mohammed Bouazizi, the people of Tunisia
rose up in an unarmed insurrection to overthrow dictator Ben Ali. Their success
prompted a popular uprising against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, which, after weeks of
unprecedented protests, succeeded in ousting him. Soon, the grassroots struggles for democracy
spread, with protests taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Though some protests
were violently suppressed, movements of the Arab Spring have dramatically
increased prospects for democratization in the Middle East. (More here)

Social Media Isn’t Changing the World; It’s Creating a New One: Social Media is a great tool for spreading information and connecting people worldwide. 96% of Generation Y has joined a social network. Google, Facebook, and Twitter connect around two billion people worldwide – a third of the planet’s
population! More video was uploaded to YouTube in six months than was produced by the three
major TV networks in 60 years. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles, all written by volunteers.
Through social media, a new order based on open access, decentralized creativity,
More here)

Couchsurfing: Offer Your Couch, Make New Friends: The gift economy is alive and global among an improbable network of "Couchsurfers." Since its
launch in 2003, Couchsurfing.org has become an international phenomenon. It has attracted
1,930,000 registered Couchsurfers from around the world and facilitated 2,086,778 successful surf and host experiences. Couches are offered in 230 countries and 73,339 cities. (More here)

The New Economy Movement: The emergence of the term "new economy" in public discourse in recent decades may be a sign
that support for status quo capitalism is wavering. A growing movement of people accepts the
idea that the entire economic system must be radically restructured for critical social and
environmental goals to be met. They call for institutions with more egalitarian priorities than the
narrow corporate focus on profits and growth. As the economy continues to falter, this
movement is working to define a viable path toward long-term systemic change. (More here)

Three Ways to Bring People Together in Your Neighborhood: Great ways to connect your community: set up a "gift circle" for neighbors to meet each others'
needs by sharing what they have; throw a community swap meet where people come together
with food, music, and all kinds of creative exchanges; or start a neighborhood work group that pools local talent for meaningful collaboration on community projects. (More here)

How to Get Free from Wall Street: Redefine Wealth and Create New Systems of Exchange: Inspiring international economist David Korten proposes that we create real wealth through increased political
participation; by basing value on living systems rather than on the money system; by shifting
power from global financial markets to local, community-controlled economies; and by
expanding the areas of our lives that are based on gift economies, barter, mutual aid, and caring for the greater good. (More here)

Transformative Films Educate and Awaken as Well as Entertain: Transformative movies are deeply impacting 21st century audiences. What differentiates these
films from others is their explicit intention to either affirm a positive vision of the world or to
–to challenge personal or cultural conditioning or beliefs. (More here. Transformative films and videos available free here and here)

Coherence and Chaos – Why We Need Both: On every level of living systems, there exists evidence of the value of both chaos and coherence;
healthy function is dependent on their coexistence. Each is important in different situations.
When we exclusively reify one over the other, we pay a price. For example, a lack of healthy
variability in neural activity is associated with depression. Conversely, a lack of coherence in
brain wave patterns is characteristic of schizophrenia. Context matters. (More here)

Research Shows That Eco-Farming, Not Big Ag, Is the Key to Feeding the World: The power elite claim that only industrial-scale
corporate agriculture can feed the growing human population. According to this myth, growing enough food will require expanding
the current agribusiness model based largely on fossil fuels, petrochemicals, and
capital-intensive monocultures of genetically modified
crops. Yet recent scientific evidence demonstrates that farms designed to emulate natural
ecosystems not only protect and restore natural resources, but are more productive than industrial
farms. (More here)

Wind and Solar Are Competitive with Coal and Nuclear: Accounting for the full economic, environmental, and health costs of coal and nuclear energy
makes wind, solar, and other non-fossil fuel power economically competitive. (More here)

Studies Indicate Humans are Wired for Empathy: Scientists recently discovered mirror neurons in all primates. Mirror neurons enable us to
experience another's plight as if we were experiencing it ourselves. Several studies suggest humans
are not soft-wired for aggression, violence, and self-interest (products of hierarchical oppression), but for collaboration and
companionship. Our main drive is to belong. Consciousness has changed
throughout history. As we evolve, we extend our empathetic ties. Today's technology allows people
around the globe to interact, furthering our potential for empathetic connection. (More here)

The Health Benefits of Gratitude: The world's leading expert on gratitude, Robert Emmons, finds that people who regularly cultivate gratitude report
a host of physical, psychological, and social benefits. Gratitude celebrates the present, blocks
negative emotions, and affirms goodness by recognizing external, greater-than-self factors.
People who are grateful have a higher sense of self worth because they are continually aware that
others are looking out for them. (More here)

Note: For summaries of some of the most inspiring major media articles ever published, click here.

Important: Top 20 Articles Ever Published Revealing Media Censorship

For concise summaries of the top 20 most revealing articles ever published in the major media with links to the full articles on their media websites, see www.WantToKnow.info/newsarticles. For some of the top stories ever which the press failed to cover, click here. And for an empowering website which specializes in providing fact-filled news articles and concise summaries of major cover-ups which impact our lives and world, see www.WantToKnow.info. All information is provided to inspire us to work together for a brighter future for us all.

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Finding Balance: WantToKnow.info Inspiration Center

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